Joe Biden Johnny Louis/FilmMagic
While North Carolina is a swing state that has a Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, and went for President Barack Obama in 2008, South Carolina has been a deep red state. Pundits have consistently described North Carolina as being in play for former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, but they haven’t been saying that about South Carolina — until now. A Quinnipiac poll finds President Donald Trump ahead of Biden by only 1% in South Carolina. And this comes at a time when South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham is facing the toughest reelection fight of his career.
When Democrat Jaime Harrison took on Graham — who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee — in South Carolina’s 2020 U.S. Senate race, the word “longshot” was often used to describe his campaign. Harrison himself acknowledged that he was fighting an uphill battle given how conservative South Carolina is known for being. A Democrat hasn’t won a U.S. Senate race in South Carolina since 1998, and the last Democratic presidential nominee who won South Carolina’s electoral votes was Jimmy Carter in 1976. Trump, in 2016, defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton by 14% in South Carolina.
